The Young Lady's Mentor eBook

Let not this dangerous risk be yours. While yet
young—­young in habits, in energies, in
affections, devote all to the service of the best of
masters. “The work of righteousness,”
even now, through difficulties, self-denial, and anxieties,
will be “peace, and the effect thereof quietness
and assurance for ever."[102]

FOOTNOTES:

[89] 1 Cor. viii. 13.

[90] Matt. xviii. 6, 7.

[91] Milnes.

[92] Keble.

[93] French.

[94] James i. 12.

[95] 1 John v. 19.

[96] Matt. xviii. 6, 7.

[97] Gen. iv. 9.

[98] Rev. xi. 15.

[99] Matt. v. 8.

[100] Col. i. 12.

[101] Jer. ii. 19.

[102] Isa. xxxii. 19.

THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN ON SOCIETY.[103]

“Whatever may be the customs and laws of a country,
women always give the tone to morals. Whether
slaves or free, they reign, because their empire is
that of the affections. This influence, however,
is more or less salutary, according to the degree
of esteem in which they are held:—­they
make men what they are. It seems as though Nature
had made man’s intellect depend upon their dignity,
as she has made his happiness depend upon their virtue.
This, then, is the law of eternal justice,—­man
cannot degrade woman without himself falling into
degradation: he cannot elevate her without at
the same time elevating himself. Let us cast
our eyes over the globe! Let us observe those
two great divisions of the human race, the East and
the West. Half the old world remains in a state
of inanity, under the oppression of a rude civilization:
the women there are slaves; the other advances in
equalization and intelligence: the women there
are free and honoured.

“If we wish, then, to know the political and
moral condition of a state, we must ask what rank
women hold in it. Their influence embraces the
whole life. A wife,—­a mother,—­two
magical words, comprising the sweetest sources of
man’s felicity. Theirs is the reign of beauty,
of love, of reason. Always a reign! A man
takes counsel with his wife; he obeys his mother;
he obeys her long after she has ceased to live, and
the ideas which he has received from her become principles
stronger even than his passions.

“The reality of the power is not disputed; but
it may be objected that it is confined in its operation
to the family circle: as if the aggregate of
families did not constitute the nation! The man
carries with him to the forum the notions which the
woman has discussed with him by the domestic hearth.
His strength there realizes what her gentle insinuations
inspired. It is sometimes urged as matter of complaint
that the business of women is confined to the domestic
arrangements of the household: and it is not
recollected that from the household of every citizen
issue forth the errors and prejudices which govern
the world!